Remembering Modernism and Building Memory in the Federal Republic of Germany
Remembering Modernism and Building Memory in the Federal Republic of Germany was the working title of Kathleen James-Chakraborty's 2017 publication Modernism as Memory: Building Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany (University of Minnesota Press), which addresses the role of ruins, fragments, and absence in churches, museums, and memoryscapes created in the Federal Republic of Germany since the end of World War II. Arguing that they emerge from within modernism rather than are characteristically postmodern, it demonstrates the way in which modernism has long been deployed as a form of historicism. Other topics covered include the adaptation of outmoded industrial installations to serve as cultural infrastructure in the Ruhr region and the controversy over the construction of a monumental mosque in Cologne.
Professor James-Chakraborty received an IRCHSS Senior Research Fellowship (2011/12) to research and write this book on memory in postwar German architecture.